Biography

Dashwood was a cousin of Sir Samuel Dashwood. His father, a wealthy revenue farmer, was promised a baronetcy in 1682, but died before the patent passed the great seal. Dashwood inherited an estate of £2,300 p.a. and acquired by marriage property in Oxfordshire valued at a further £1,700 p.a. A courtier under James II, he nevertheless lent Edmund Prideaux £10,000 to buy his pardon after Monmouth’s rebellion, and stood security for the remaining £5,000, no doubt as a strictly business transaction. A churchman, he refused the first two questions on the repeal of the Test Act and Penal Laws, and was removed from local office. It was reported at this time that he ‘hates Popery, [and] loves the Church of England, but cannot swallow the doctrine of passive obedience’. He was returned for Banbury as ‘a member of this borough’ at the general election of 1689. An inactive Member of the Convention, he voted to agree with the Lords that the throne was not vacant, according to Ailesbury’s list, but he was appointed to only four committees, of which the most important was for the repeal of the Corporations Act. He voted as a Tory under William, refusing the Association in 1696. He died on 14 July 1734 and was buried at Kirtlington. His grandson represented the county from 1740 to 1754, and again from 1761 to 1768, as a Tory.4